Sunday 10 April 2011 10.13 EDT
First published on Sunday 10 April 2011 10.13 EDT

The London anti-cuts demonstration on 26 March is notorious for the Met police making the unprecedented move of arresting 145 peaceful UK Uncut protesters; a move which, according to civil liberties solicitor Matt Foot, calls the entire future of direct action in the UK into question.

But while the media pondered the future of protest against the opulent backdrop of Fortnum & Mason, a small town near my home in North Wales was going further. This week, Wrexham borough council was debating the eyebrow-raising proposal to ban protest in several key spaces in the town centre. Protests falling victim to this ban need only fit the nebulous criterion of being "offensive to public morals".

Enough to make Martin Luther King revolve in his grave – except the ban was suggested to prevent the English and Welsh Defence Leagues from marching through the streets. If the context of the decision is the desire to banish a group known for aggression and obscene chants about Allah it suddenly seems a lot less unreasonable. There is something jarring about a supposedly civil society hosting a demonstration of unabashed xenophobia; one could forgivably believe that the rise of the EDL is more symbolic of a decline in standards than the council's censorious response.

Indeed, the EDL might find these economically strained times provide it with fertile recruiting ground. Eric Hobsbawm notes that 1930s fascism would never have gained such traction if it hadn't been for the Great Slump that preceded it. A council which has been forced to embark on harsh spending cuts could arguably be congratulated for identifying the pitfalls from history, and putting measures in place to mitigate them.

The problem, however, is that the law is not a sentient and moral entity. Rules are rules, and if the ban is implemented, it can be used in any way. As Owen Jones has written, the Public Order Act of 1937, which was a response to the Blackshirts' march through the City of London, was used against pro-Irish republican demonstrations, and flying pickets during the miners' strike in the 1980s. What was once thought of as legislation intended to preserve public decency, quickly and alarmingly morphed into a convenient weapon with which to crush dissent.

If the ban is successful, it could be used to prevent protest that the authorities regard as inconvenient. Indeed, a peaceful UK Uncut protest held a week after 26 March was greeted with a police superintendent informing protesters he had been given carte blanche to police their actions with as "much force as he saw fit". Protesters were told that even obstruction of the shop doorway could result in aggravated trespass arrests. Actions like those of Wrexham council set a useful precedent for a government wishing to stem the growing tide of popular unrest. Wrexham may not be the only town to contemplate such a move.

There is undoubtedly a need for authorities to protect those who might feel personally intimidated by groups such as the EDL, as well as a need to guard against ignorant and damaging ideology. But that should be done in a way that doesn't curtail freedom to protest which must, by its very definition, mean suffering things that are offensive to public morals. And so I find myself in the extraordinary position of defending the rights of a group whose beliefs I find repugnant – because, ultimately, the only way of reining in the EDL's rights is by reining in my own. Pornographer Larry Flynt put it best, after winning his case in the US supreme court, when he said: "If the law will protect a scumbag like me, it will protect all of you."